FAQ

RULES

No "FOR SALE" posts. Feel free to hawk your wares in our sister subreddit /r/BitMarket - this means no goup buys as well. As common as it is in Bitcoin Mining, it is far to risky to be carried out over reddit.

No verbal abuse. If you don't have anything nice to say, it's best not to say anything at all. Remember, we were all newbies once. Mining isn't exactly a trivial venture.

I dont make much money monthly, and even a small investment into bitcoin by buying a jalapeno would be worth it to me. I am aware of the long wait time to get something from butterfly labs, I'm just wondering if making the small investment into this little piece of equipment would still be worth it when it arrives in about a year?

The only scenario i could think of where it wouldn't be is if Bitcoin drops to nothing, or if all bitcoins are found (unlikely)

I wouldn't buy a pre-order right now, the difficulty will be sky-high by then, and 5 GHs won't do it IMO. KnCMiner just sold 160THs in miners in the last while, I've heard. That will send the difficulty to space if they deliver.

Based on fair projections it should arrive within 3 months. The problem is that so many ASIC chips are being mass produced right now, and even more in development, that speculating on future difficulty is difficult. There remains a fair to good chance that you will break even, but unless you're crazy committed, you're likely to profit as much by buying 2.7BTC @ $100 now with a lot less work.

Is there a way to do an upgradable build? I was leaning towards the jalapeno because of the ease of use. But something more complicated and upgradeable is an option. Like piggybacking a bunch of little things to make something faster, so if it gets obselete I could just add more....

That option doesn't exist right now. It could (I have no idea) be possible to upgrade a jalapeño to 30GH/s in the future, but the cost would likely outweigh the benefit by the time that is feasible. Current upgrade schemes are just buying new hardware.

You can purchase someone's preorder on Ebay or you can purchase an actual in-the-hand unit on Ebay when they popup. You'll pay a premium but it might be worth it so you can get it plugged in and try to recoup while many people are still mining with old equipment.

Any thoughts on this? I havent mind but I have been thinking about jumping in by buying a unit on Ebay and trying to cash in while people are still waiting on their units. I understand it is risky but based on reviews I have read, the Jalapenos are doing people well right now.

I don't think its rational for any ASIC manufacturer to ship your unit until the unit is worthless. See if they'll give you a promise that all bitcoins mined by your unit during "testing" belong to you, not BFL (they won't).

I had not heard that there is a test blockchain, which seems obvious in hindsight but doesn't change the basic calculus: A for-profit ASIC manufacturer that ships a unit that can still ROI in any reasonable amount of time is behaving irrationally. Self-interest dictates they should mine with the unit until difficulty renders the unit worthless.

FUD is manipulation through emotion. The antidotes to fear are information and reason. Don't just say "FUD", please help me find the hole in my logic. It would ease my own uncertainty about bitcoin's future, which requires distributed mining to maintain decentralization and protect against the 51% attack. The behavior of BFL in particular (are any ASIC manufacturers shipping more than a very small number of units?) suggests that the current incentive structure encourages concentration of hashing power in the hands of the fraudsters. This could be fatal to bitcoin if true. Please help me figure out where I'm wrong. I'll feel a little sick about canceling my BFL order but will feel better about bitcoin's continuing success.

It's less risky for BFL to sell their miners. They can recoup their investments and debts faster by selling rather than mining. They also don't have to worry about the power costs of mining with 10 TB/s hash rate etc etc.

Basically they can sell more $270 units per day than the total worth of bitcoins they can mine. The upside in selling units is much greater than the Amount of coins they could potentially find.